HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: Stephen Collinson, our White House reporter joins me now from Washington. So the U.S. president there hosting

Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, talked about a lot of things that weren't necessarily related to NATO, or in fact, not related at

all.

He talked about the border. He acknowledged that closing the southern border would harm the economy. He promised that his party, the GOP, would

be the party of health care, criticized Obamacare, once again. And also addressed the Mueller report.

Let's first, Stephen, talk a little bit about what he said about NATO. And Jens Stoltenberg, over the years, had been his strategy from the beginning

has been to be non-adversarial with Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, twice said, it was an honor to host the NATO secretary general and that things

have been going well and that countries have increased their defense spending. It seems his strategy has worked with regards to the U.S.

president.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Certainly, and there were a lot of fears, especially at the beginning of Donald Trump's administration

that he could do something quite, you know, outrageous even try to pull the United States out of NATO. So the strategy has been to appease him.

Stoltenberg has let Trump claim that all of the increases in NATO defense spending are down to the president. It's true to say that President Trump

has had more success than some previous U.S. presidents enforcing European countries to spend more. But there were agreements in place well before

the Trump administration whereby NATO members pledged to reach that two percent of GDP target.

Stoltenberg also never corrects Trump. Trump talks about NATO as if everybody is paying into a club and the U.S. is paying most of the dues.

But, of course, the question is, are countries spending enough on their own defense to make them, you know, solid NATO partners?

One final thing about NATO, of course, is it's quite, you know, shocking that it should be news that on -- you know, a big anniversary of NATO, the

president of the United States, the most powerful person in NATO and in the west is backing NATO. At any time, over the last 70 years, that would

never be in question.

GORANI: Sure. Absolutely. But he has said -- he seems a lot more well- disposed with regards to NATO which is kind of interesting. So he did address the U.S. president, the Mueller report. James Comey was

interviewed by Christiane Amanpour about an hour and a half ago. She did ask him about the four-page summary that the Attorney General Barr issued

after having read the several hundred page report. Here's what he answered to that question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FORMER DIRECTOR, FBI: I think what we have to do is just keep an open mind and wait for the details. The attorney general has to not

only share details with the American people of the case, but show us his work. Why did you make the decisions you made? Why did you handle it the

way that you did? I'm confident he understands that.

He is an institutionalist. He loves the Department of Justice. The only thing he has to lose, at this point in his career, is his reputation. I

think he deserves the benefit of the doubt and us, uncharacteristically, showing some patience to give him a chance to show us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GORANI: All right. And the president was asked about releasing the full Mueller report. What did he say?

COLLINSON: Well, the president is angry that Democrats are trying to subpoena the report, to get it more quickly than Attorney General Barr says

is the case. Barr is trying to redact certain elements of intelligence and grand jury testimony. He said Democrats can have this by mid-April.

Democrats want it this week.

Now, I think what you're seeing is the White House has almost moved on from this initial stage of celebration. Trump sees himself completely

vindicated by this report. You can see the anger in the president's features that this is still going on.

What some people, it appears in the White House, and now beginning to conclude, if you read between the lines of what they're saying is, yes,

Barr came out and said there was no evidence in this report to support the fact that there was a conspiracy between Trump and Russia and that Mueller

didn't conclude to do anything -- to pursue the issue of obstruction. But that can be true.

And also, we're going to see a lot of damaging stuff that comes out about the president on the issue of what people did before the election, those

meetings with Russia that all these people in Trump's orbit lied about. The question of obstruction, Comey -- Mueller didn't say there was no

obstruction. He say if he was unable to come to a conclusion about how to deal with it. And there were evidences on both sides. A president

shouldn't be obstructing justice in any case.

[14:55:10] So I think, you know, when this report --

GORANI: But also we haven't seen the report.

COLLINSON: -- comes out, there's going to be a change in the politics of this. Right.

GORANI: We haven't -- we just haven't seen it. And that's part of the issue here for a lot of people is that they read the summary, the four-page

summary, there's probably a whole lot more nuance in the report once it comes out and we're able to actually assess for ourselves.

A quick last question before we wrap it up this house on the border. Because he was asked by a reporter, are you going to seal that border? He

said he hasn't made his intention known. Then he started blaming Congress, saying that no deal with Congress would mean that the border will be closed

100 percent.

But then he sort of massaged it a bit and was equivocal, because he said Mexico has started to apprehend people, essentially saying that because

maybe he threatened to seal the border, that Mexico was now being a little bit more effective in stopping people from crossing the border illegally.

I mean, based on everything he said, does it sound to you like he's going to close those entry points at the southern border?

COLLINSON: You just gave a reason why it's so difficult to pick what Donald Trump is going to do. Because on the one hand, by going after the

Democrats and saying, I'm going to close the border, unless we get a deal. He's raising the stakes in this confrontation.

Then as you say, he's talking about Mexico stopping more people at its southern border, it sounds like he's looking for a face-saving way out of

this situation.

I can tell you, people in the White House think it would be a complete disaster if the border was closed. I was talking to someone who represents

fruit importers yesterday, and he said, you know, immediately the border is closed, prices in the supermarkets would go up. And within days, you would

have bear shelves all over the United States in the fruit and vegetable section. An auto industry would also close down. So this is a very, very

dangerous situation. Probably Trump will walk back. But you can never tell with this president.

GORANI: You can't. Although he did acknowledge it would harm the economy. Also, you would have massive shortages of avocados. And I think the

Americans love their guacamole. So we'll see if that has an impact in terms of the president's decision-making.

Thanks very much, Stephen Collinson. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks for watching tonight. I'm Hala Gorani. "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" is